I usually describe Pharma as drug dealers. When I worked in doctors' surgeries I quite often came across the "pharmacy reps" who had deep expense accounts and happily plied all the staff with free buffet lunches. Goodness knows what the docs got behind closed doors. I always referred to them as the drug dealers, and I got a range of incredulous respones from people.

LI - It's what we in the medical profession know as the 'If you know what's good for, we'll tell you what's good for you paradox'.

It's very common. For example, if you smoke, drink or eat anything remotely palatable, you've irresponsibly elected to risk your life and you're a bloody fool who has to be protected from himself.

If you go to shoot at arabs (note - this has to take place in some foreign hellhole), you can eat, smoke and drink anything you like (while getting shot at into the bargain) but you're a responsible, selfless hero who has foregone the right to protective equipment by electing to risk your life.

one of the drugs was designed to enhance the happiness of someone healthy, the other to palliate the suffering of someone extremely sick.

one of these tragic deaths was due to misadventure, the other to corporate manslaughter.

the nhs was envisaged as a prescription for good health, but has become a recipe for disaster - as a system, the national health service is terminally dysfunctional, primarily at management level, and the conceited nature of its bureaucracy inhibits the delivery of a prompt and appropriately responsive care-package for the individual customer - who always has to demand proper service before it is offered. it would be preferable to abolish the sytemically-obsessive management and to place responsibility for the patient's welfare upon the patient himself (or his family). in the nhs there is no functional relationship between the actual shop-floor service-providers and the patient (or his family), save for that which is engendered on the hoof - and this situation is crucially exacerbated by the fact that there is no financial incentive for providing a quality service, nor any disincentive for providing a bad one. the nhs is always looking to save costs by cutting services, as opposed to offering every available form of service and thereby raising income - this is essentially why, in the nhs, it is common for patients to be 'killed by the system', because 'the system' views patients as an 'expense', or 'outgoing'.

i recently read an article which depicted the european union as a voracious wealth-devouring system, totally out of the control of those who are in its employ - the nhs is a similar entity, it is not run by moral individuals with independent intellects who take responsibility for their actions, it is operated via remotely controlled clinical automatons pre-programmed by, and emotionally beholden to, the system. scary stuff.

My point was that politicians and others do not permit us the responsibility to eat, drink and smoke freely because we may damage our health. However, we are considered responsible enough to get ourselves killed to fight for our supposed freedoms.

All possible harm or even death to our own bodies has to be state-sanctioned.